Re: [PATCH/RFC] Add [] as an alias for a reference to the empty tree

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 8, 2010, 16:07 UTC
Message-ID: <20100508160731.GA4638@progeny.tock>
In-Reply-To: <7vhbmjc6dy.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano wrote:

> The reason I am not interested in the feature
> is because I don't see much value in running "git diff EMPTY <anything>".
> Perhaps "git archive" might be what the user really wants to find.

I suspect the goal was to use a tool such as checkpatch, or get_maintainer without -f. An implementation using git archive should still work (with the help of a tar diff-ing program with the EMPTY feature ;-)), but as UI that might be less discoverable than building it into git diff.

Personally, I liked both the

  git diff $(</dev/null git hash-object -t tree --stdin) $rev

and

  git diff --root $rev

suggestions.  That may be from a warped sense of aesthetics.

Cheers, Jonathan